Interpreting Brexit: Reimagining Political Traditions

107 Pages·2022·1.427 MB·English

by  Mark Bevir, Matt Beech

Interpreting Brexit
Reimagining Political
Traditions
Edited by
Mark Bevir
Matt Beech
Interpreting Brexit
Mark Bevir Matt Beech
(cid:129)
Editors
Interpreting Brexit
Reimagining Political Traditions
BritishPolitics “
Previouslypublishedin , InterpretingBrexit:
”
Reimagining Political Traditions , Volume 16, Issue 2,
June 2021
Editors
Mark Bevir Matt Beech
Department ofPolitical Science Faculty of Business
University of California LawandPolitics
Berkeley, CA, USA University of Hull
Hull, UK
ISBN978-3-031-17280-9
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Contents
Brexit and the Myth of British National Identity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Richard T. Ashcroft and Mark Bevir
Political community and the new parochialism: Brexit
and the reimagination of British liberalism and conservatism . . . . . . . . 17
Mark I. Vail
Brexit and the Labour Party: Europe, cosmopolitanism
and the narrowing of traditions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Matt Beech
The dilemma of Brexit: hard choices in the narrow context
of British foreign policy traditions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
Jamie Gaskarth and Nicola Langdon
Ironic inversions and stable purposes: reimagining political
traditions in Ireland after the EU Referendum 2016 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
Cathy Gormley-Heenan and Arthur Aughey
The deep story of Leave voters affective assemblages: implications
for political decentralisation in the UK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
Joanie Willett
v
British Politics (2021) 16:117–132
https://doi.org/10.1057/s41293-021-00167-7
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Brexit and the Myth of British National Identity
Richard T. Ashcroft1 · Mark Bevir2
Accepted: 14 February 2021 / Published online: 20 March 2021
© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited part of Springer Nature 2021
Abstract
In this paper we analyse Brexit in relation to changes in British national identity
since World War II. We begin by analysing how the concept of “tradition” relates
to “nation”, and then examine current discourses surrounding Brexit and national
identity. We trace the ways in which British national identity has been renegotiated
since World War II through contests over nationality, citizenship, cultural diversity,
and Europe. Finally, we ask why British political actors have struggled to negotiate
the dilemmas of post-Imperial British identity, and what lessons can be learned. We
look at changing coalitions within British political parties, which we connect to phil-
osophical tensions in their underlying intellectual traditions, and to changes brought
about by globalisation. We conclude that Brexit and the broader crisis of liberal
democracy of which it is a part have deep historical and philosophical roots, and that
attempts to unite our policy through a single national identity will be unsuccessful.
Keywords Brexit · Nationalism · Tradition · Decolonization · Multiculturalism ·
European Union · Populism · Globalisation
Introduction
In this paper we examine the connection between Brexit and British national iden-
tity. We start by analysing the relationship between nation, history, and tradition.
We suggest that the idea of a single British identity or political tradition is a myth.
British identity, like the British political tradition, is inherently fractured, contested,
and unstable. We examine the connections between Brexit and national identity in
*
Richard T. Ashcroft
[email protected]
Mark Bevir
[email protected]
1 Department of Political Science and Interdisciplinary Social Sciences Program, University
of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, USA
2 Department of Political Science and Center for British Studies, University of California
at Berkeley, Berkeley, USA
1 Reprinted from the journal
R. T. Ashcroft, M. Bevir
current public discourse, before tracing the renegotiation of Britishness from World
War II to Brexit. We argue that our narrative shows Brexit is the symptom of under-
lying tensions which cut across British national identity, our political parties, and
the intellectual traditions they draw upon. We conclude that attempting to unite our
society around a common national identity is futile, as a singular vision of Britain—
no matter how putatively inclusive—cannot accommodate the plural identities, nar-
ratives, and traditions that constitute our contested polity.
National identities, histories, and traditions
Our main aim in this paper is to narrate the changing and competing traditions of
“Britishness” that are found in Brexit. Before embarking on our narrative, however,
we need to clarify why we think the idea of a single stable British identity or politi-
cal tradition is a myth. In doing so, we clarify how we can simultaneously both use
and critique concepts of “identity” and “tradition”. On the one hand, political actors
and everyday citizens definitely operate with ideas of Britishness that influence their
behaviour. On the other hand, when these actors or scholars treat Britishness as
stable and monolithic, they are inevitably perpetuating a myth. We have discussed
the theoretical grounds for these views of tradition and identity at length elsewhere
(Ashcroft and Bevir 2019a, c; Bevir 1999, 2007), so our account here will be brief.
The key point is that the concept of tradition enables human scientists to situate
actors in the contexts relevant for explaining their actions. The grammar of our con-
cepts presupposes that individuals are socialized into traditions which they use to
make sense of the world, and to respond purposefully to the dilemmas they encoun-
ter when acting in it. Traditions help individuals to organize their beliefs (more or
less) coherently, and therefore enable purposive action. By placing historical actors
within particular traditions we are able to link their beliefs, desires, and actions in a
way that explains their behaviour rather than simply describing it.
For traditions to clarify rather than obscure purposeful human action we must
understand their nature as social, rather than natural, objects. We must not reify tra-
ditions, mistakenly treating them as things which have existence entirely separately
from human beings (Marsh and Hall 2007, 2016; Hall 2011; Hall et al. 2018). In
reifying traditions, we falsely prescribe to them causal powers that can operate inde-
pendently of the way they are interpreted by particular individuals. Traditions are
not brute causes of behaviour, but rather help us explain the particular choices actors
freely make. Likewise, as traditions are social constructions not natural kinds, they
cannot have necessary content or essential features. Traditions are constantly evolv-
ing along with the world which they help make sense of, and so must not be judged
against idealized or “authentic” versions of themselves. As human scientists, we
must be aware of the bewitching effects of language, which constantly tempt us into
reifying or essentializing social objects.
Identifying traditions and situating individuals within them is necessary for mak-
ing human behaviour intelligible. Traditions are passed down over time from person
to person, and in the process they evolve, as individual actors change their beliefs
in response to the dilemmas they face. The only way to describe and explain this
Reprinted from the journal 2
Brexit and the Myth of British National Identity
process as human scientists is through a narrative of our own. The tendency of mod-
ern social science to rely heavily on formal, quantitative methods to understand phe-
nomena is therefore problematic. Narratives are also evidence, and cannot simply
be trumped by data gathered by other putatively more “objective” approaches, such
as surveys of public attitudes. Atomized pieces of information regarding people’s
beliefs and behaviours should not be used to dismiss narratives that are able to con-
textualize these attitudes within broader patterns of thought and behaviour.
The limitations of modern social science techniques when applied to history
should not, however, make us nostalgic for the essentializing national histories
that they replaced. On the contrary, it is also important to guard against essential-
ism and reification when assessing traditions that clothe their abstracted and con-
structed nature in organic and naturalizing language, as has typically been the case
with national history or national identity. Classic national histories took the form of
“master narratives” that claimed to elucidate the character and traditions of particu-
lar nations in order to explain their development over time (Bevir 2007). A recurrent
problem with these grand national histories, however, was that while they claimed to
be describing a national identity, in fact they were part of the process of construct-
ing it. As elements of elite-led projects of nation-building they treated the national
“character” as a single tradition which possessed a stable core content. In the Brit-
ish context, these Whiggish narratives typically described British culture—and the
institutions through which it was expressed—as uniquely tolerant, pragmatic, and
stable. These grand national narratives thereby dismissed the contingent and con-
tested features of “Britishness” in favour of a romanticized and essentialized view
of the nation. Yet, while influential in public life, these accounts of the nation were
ultimately rejected by modern historians as unreliable.
We must therefore be suspicious of sentimental paeans to forms of shared national
identity that are themselves abstractions from the conflicting beliefs of individuals.
Any account of national identity that foregrounds commonality over contestation
risks lapsing back into the myth-making of the grand national histories of yester-
year. National identity is better construed as a broad tradition comprised of multiple
and competing strands upon which political actors draw selectively to suit their par-
ticular purposes. As well as rejecting essentialist accounts of the nation as “primor-
dial” or “organic”, we must therefore also be suspicious of those who describe it as
“imagined” or “mythical” but nevertheless see nations as constituted by shared his-
tory, institutions, values, or culture.1 Any invocation of a singular “national identity”
is better understood as normative claim about what national identity should be, than
as an empirical claim about what it is. Our articulation of the nation as a form of
tradition must have a critical edge that is absent from much of the related the public
discourse.
We have argued that both social science and national history can rely on myths
about a reified Britishness—an allegedly shared and dominant national identity or
1 For example by Herder, Benedict Anderson, and David Miller. The phrase “national identity” in the
singular is therefore problematic, as it functions as a broad generalization of the beliefs of a vast number
of individuals and thus risks losing empirical traction (Ashcroft and Bevir 2018b).
3 Reprinted from the journal
R. T. Ashcroft, M. Bevir
tradition. Both are therefore inadequate if we are to narrate the complex relationships
between national identities, British political traditions, and Brexit. Modern social
science abrogates narrative as a mode of explanation, and thus cannot make sense of
the role traditions play in politics without treating them as reified causes of behav-
iour. Whig history embraces narrative as a mode of explanation, but by describing
national identity in essentialized terms loses empirical traction on the plural inter-
pretations of the nation at play. We need a narrative of British national identity and
political traditions that neither reifies or essentializes its objects of study. We require
a narrative that is historicist in approach and critical in orientation.
Brexit, national identity, and decolonization
One of the defining characteristics of debates over Brexit is that the different actors
seem unable to agree on what the central issues are, the likely consequences of the
different scenarios, or even what the referendum was really about. We have argued
elsewhere that the result was driven by the interaction of plural cross-cutting atti-
tudes towards multiple issues, including national identity (Ashcroft and Bevir 2016).
Framing the referendum question as a binary choice between staying and leaving the
European Union was therefore a mistake, as it provided the illusion of a cohesive
majority opinion in favour of leaving the EU. This allowed the referendum result to
be shrouded in the rhetoric of popular sovereignty, lending respectability to darker
populist urges amongst the public and the political class. The political paroxysms
since the vote appear to have borne out these concerns, with the various factions
within Parliament splitting and recombining in legion ways over time. Debates
within Parliament, the Courts, and the public sphere have become increasingly hos-
tile and intolerant, with each actor claiming democratic legitimacy over the others. It
is therefore not surprising that, far from settling matters, the vote to leave the Euro-
pean Union continues to divide Britain in a multitude of ways.
Some of these cleavages map onto demographic differences, with younger, more
educated, and minority voters on one side, and older, less educated, and majority-
ethnic voters on the other (Ashcroft 2016; Clarke et al. 2017). Others fall on pri-
marily geographical lines, with Scotland and Northern Ireland opposed to leaving
and England and Wales in favour, and urban areas voting Remain and rural voting
Leave. Another way of understanding attitudes to Brexit is to see the debate as one
that is as much about subjective feelings—of economic insecurity, political disen-
franchisement, or fear of immigration—as it is about underlying social realities. Yet
none of these divisions map unproblematically onto the political parties which have
dominated British life for over a century. The Labour and the Conservative Parties
have been riven by internal disputes regarding the referendum result and the right
response to it. The Liberal Democrats have maintained a greater degree of unity by
remaining consistently anti-Brexit, but this clarity of purpose has failed to trans-
late into electoral success, despite significant public support for their position. How
then can we understand and respond to Brexit in a productive way, when it seems
to be defined by cleavages that defy our traditional forms of political analysis and
organization?
Reprinted from the journal 4
Brexit and the Myth of British National Identity
We argue Brexit can be fruitfully understood through the lens of British national
identity, which both frames public discourse and forms a central part of the sub-
stance of the debates. Whilst ours is not the only way of framing Brexit—as the
other papers in this special edition demonstrate—we believe it is a vital one. Most
obviously, there is a consistent discursive connection between Brexit and Brit-
ish national identity. The debates surrounding the referendum are often conducted
through the language of the nation, frequently framing the conflict as one over the
future of modern Britain, what it means to be British, and how Britishness might
be secured or damaged by Brexit (Ashcroft and Bevir 2018a, 2019b). Actors articu-
late very different visions of “Britishness”, however, that revolve around a variety of
axes that can be more or less exclusionary, such as political values, cultural norms,
or historical heritage. It is unclear whether the link between Brexit and Britishness
is driven primarily by elite rhetoric or underlying public opinion. Yet whatever the
ultimate cause and effect, the consistent association of Brexit and claims regarding
“Britishness” is a fact of contemporary political discourse, and therefore the idiom
of national identity provides us with a way to both narrate Brexit and critically
engage it.
Beyond its prominence in current discourse, British national identity is also con-
nected to Brexit both historically and philosophically. Brexit is the latest stage in a
debate over national identity that has been ongoing since 1945, when decolonization
led to a series of changes that radically altered Britain. The dilemma decolonization
posed for Britain started a chain of events where each “solution” caused another set
of dilemmas, which in turn required further controversial adjustments. These ten-
sions were salved rather than solved by the series of compromises between—and
within—Labour and the Conservatives after World War II. Brexit has thus high-
lighted the fact that the two major parties, Labour and the Conservatives, have been
unable to negotiate different currents which pull them in different directions on
nation, multiculturalism, and globalisation.
The transformation of Britain in the years following World War II altered both
national identity and citizenship, each of which had internally and externally-fac-
ing elements. Prior to World War II, a prominent narrative portrayed Britain as a
uniquely blessed nation. In drawing on the Whig interpretation of history this form
of national identity gave a progressive account of British political institutions, valor-
ising the “peaceful adaptation, timely accommodation, [and] responsive evolution”
that characterized the unwritten constitution (Marquand 1995, p. 186). At the cen-
tre of this story was Parliament, and perched atop Parliament sat a constitutional
monarchy, seen as evidence of the balanced, stable, and democratic nature of Brit-
ish political institutions. Yet this narrative was not a purely domestic one. Britain
had created the largest empire the world had ever seen, and a central justification
of Britain’s “Empire of virtue” was that, unlike other European forms of colonial-
ism, it would ultimately prepare its colonies to rule themselves (Morefield 2005).
5 Reprinted from the journal